(HOST) On this Labor Day, commentator Willem Lange is thinking about time and work, and is not happy with the result.
(LANGE) With advancing age, I’ve discovered two things I’ve long considered to be immutable, aren’t. Einstein must have felt this way when he proved that objects and people age less rapidly at high speeds. At least I think that’s what he proved. It’s nothing that concerns me much. My discoveries have value for average folks: laymen, homeowners, and do-it-yourselfers.
I noticed first that time was changing. Geniuses like Einstein, Salvador Dali, and Doc Brown (of Back to the Future) have fiddled with its apparent steady progression. I’ve migrated to a concept common in the far North, where the Cree and Inuit often disregard linear time. After decades as a contractor, bound to a never-varying schedule of work weeks and paydays, I find myself at loose ends, with years of projects ahead. The Northern model looks ever more attractive.
My Thursdays are indistinguishable from Mondays. I can’t remember how long we’ve lived here, when the dog died, when I last broke my leg. Time has become hazy, like one of those bubbly nebulae photographed by the Hubble telescope. The list of jobs to do around the place is longer than ever, but there’s no way to know if there’s enough time left to do them all. And what would happen if they were all completed? Don’t we always need work to get back to?
Which leads to the second phenomenon. While time has gone a-wandering, disdaining the discipline of the watch on my wrist, work is doing an odd thing, as well: It’s going backward. The more I do, the more there’s still to be done.
My workbench is cluttered with all kinds of stuff I’ve gotten for various projects. There’s duct material for a wood stove air intake; electric boxes, plugs, and switches. A couple of weeks ago, prompted by recent burglaries in the neighborhood, I disinterred a brand-new motion-detecting outside light and vowed to install it that day in the rear gable of the house.
There was nothing to it But while running the wire through the attic, I ought to put in a few outlets in the partially completed knee wall along the way. Before I do that, however, I’ve got to complete the knee wall. And before I do that, I need to insulate between the roof rafters. I hauled the compressor and staple gun up to the attic and went at it.
Squirming around in the acute angle between the rafters and the attic floor was the best exercise I’d had in months. My face mask kept fogging up my specs, but a few hours later I was ready to start finishing the knee wall.
So at the moment, the compressor is still up there, two sheets of foam board for the back side of the knee wall lie cut and uninstalled, and the original job – the installation of the outside light – is farther from completion now than it was when I started.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.